Former Cops Were Investigated In '94

The Retired Detectives Are Charged With Taking Part In 8 Slayings On Behalf Of The Mob.

March 13, 2005|By William K. Rashbaum, the New York Times

NEW YORK -- Two retired New York City police detectives, former partners who had long been suspected of ties to organized crime, have been charged by federal prosecutors with taking part in eight slayings on behalf of the mafia -- most while they were still active members of the police force.

The charges, detailed in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn, were among the most startling allegations of police corruption in memory.

In one case, in 1992, prosecutors said, the detectives used an unmarked police car to pull over a mafia captain on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and then shot him to death for a rival mob figure.

In another, in 1986, they flashed their badges and kidnapped a man, threw him in the trunk of their car and delivered him to a mob rival who tortured and killed him.

"In a stunning betrayal of their shields, their colleagues and the citizens they were sworn to protect, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa secretly worked on the payroll of the mob while they were members of the NYPD," U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference to announce the indictment.

For years, Mauskopf charged, the men had been paid handsomely for their role in the killings and for routinely funneling secret information about criminal investigations to other members of organized crime. In most of the killings, she said, they did not pull the trigger but helped other hit men track down the victims, at one point becoming so instrumental that they were put on the mob's payroll at $4,000 a month.

Eppolito, 56, who co-wrote a book about his life as a police officer whose relatives were in the mob, and Caracappa, 63, who worked in a police unit that was responsible for investigating mafia killings, were arrested late Wednesday night at an Italian restaurant in Las Vegas, Mauskopf said.

At their arraignment in Las Vegas on Friday, both men appeared in orange jump suits before their families in the courtroom to enter a plea of not guilty. A federal magistrate ordered them held in Nevada pending extradition back to Brooklyn.

For more than a decade, the men have lived across the street from each other in an affluent gated community in Las Vegas, Caracappa working as a private investigator and Eppolito playing bit parts in nearly a dozen popular movies, including Goodfellas, portraying mobsters, hoodlums and drug dealers.

The charges, dramatic as they are, were not entirely surprising: The pair had been investigated by the FBI and the New York Police Department in 1994 after a mafia informant provided the authorities with many of the details of the killings. But the informant, who prosecutors said had commissioned many of the crimes, was later discredited, and federal authorities at the time were unable to build a prosecutable case, officials said Thursday.

But now, with a new informant whose name was not disclosed and a team of what Mauskopf called tenacious investigators, several of them also retired city police detectives, the authorities during several years were able to collect enough evidence to persuade a grand jury to indict the men.

The former detectives were charged with racketeering conspiracy, which includes their roles in the killings, two attempted murders, obstruction of justice, money laundering and other crimes.

The indictment accuses them of working as secret associates of the Lucchese crime family, one of New York's mob clans. They are charged with disclosing the identity of six cooperating witnesses -- three of whom were slain -- and compromising several federal and state investigations.

None of the eight murders charged in the case -- all but one involving victims who were organized-crime figures -- occurred after the first, unsuccessful attempt to make a case against the men.

Eppolito's lawyer, Richard A. Schonfeld, said his client "absolutely denies the charges" and cited what he called an exemplary 21-year police career, with 107 medals, including several for valor, in arguing that he should be released.

Edward Hayes, a lawyer in New York who represented Caracappa when he was under investigation more than a decade ago, said he was shocked by the charges.

The charges against the two men, who face up to life in prison if convicted, will be resolved in the coming months, or perhaps years, in federal court in Brooklyn. But the accusations are a bizarre and breathtaking chapter in the history of corrupt cops, mobsters and murder.

Both men joined the department in 1969, a year in which the city, with abbreviated background checks, hired an extraordinary number of officers who were later arrested or fired.

Eppolito had relatives involved in organized crime -- his father, Ralph, was called Fat the Gangster and his uncle, James, was known as Jimmy the Clam. But Eppolito did not disclose any of that on his police application.